Another Roon Heavy Handed Policy

Jack is correct. We use Roon a lot in the store because many of our products require it. We also help customers with Roon Nucleus’ and the like.

Roon is hands down the UI champ. It’s search function and UI are second to none. Very powerful too.

However, for us in the store and me at home (I have Roon running for my NAIM music server which I use in the family room) and it’s buggy in both places, buggy as hell. I’ve been taking videos and will soon start a channel and post them. It’s constantly crashing and it hangs ALL. THE. TIME.

On the flip side, the Lumin app is stable and I’ve been using it so long, and sounds great. It is basic, but fully functional with great support from Peter and the rest of the gang. But certainly it’s not as pretty as Roon. The good news is that Lumin gives you the option of using their software or Roon.

Aurender is the same way: stable, functional and sonically superior to Roon in our A:B tests using the same DAC, cables, etc. Aurender repeatedly says “it’s all about the sound.” That’s always their focus first. Their app is very nice and I use it at home in the big system. Stable and sounds incredible.

You just can’t beat Roon for search and the gorgeous UI. But in my experience and several A/B tests, sonically it gives up a little something to the competitors.


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For me, it’s the meta data that ROON brings to its UI that pulls me towards it. I really enjoy following the reviews and links to new albums, composers, contributing artists etc. I do that while I am listening and it adds to the experience.

IF I am giving up a little SQ, I am willing to do that.

However, I have as Mike points out, started to see its reliability/stability degrade. If that continues I will reluctantly have to find an alternative.
 
My favorite feature is Roon Radio and the way it interacts with Qobuz. It allows me to discover new music that’s aligned with my individual taste in music. Getting the maximum value out of Roon Radio requires providing feedback to their algorithm by pressing the thumbs up/down icons with tracks you like/dislike. The more feedback you give, the better the algorithm gets at learning your musical taste. It doesn’t require you to rate every song, but the more you rate the less likely RR will serve up songs you don’t like.
 
One final topic is support. As a dealer, we have received incredible support from Lumin (Peter rocks!) and Aurender. With the Aurender support, it’s built into the app. Click the support button and Aurender will remotely IP into your Aurender and diagnose the issue while you’re asleep. 99% of the time they can fix any issues remotely. Awesome!

When our Roon Nucleus in the store stopped working earlier this year, I had no support person to call for help. I emailed Roon, two days later got a response was told to go to the portal.

Went to the portal, requested support and waited. It basically went like this:

Day 1: send email
Day 2: no response
Day 3: told to go to portal
Day 3: went to portal and filled out form for support
Day 4: no response
Day 5: asked if we rebooted the nucleus, responded that we tried to but it was dead. Wouldnt turn on.
Day 6: no response
Day 7: asked if we see a red light on inside. Responded that we did.
Day 8: no response
Day 9: asked if we see a white light on inside. Responded that we did not.
Day 10: no response
...

.....and this went on for several more days before we finally got a RA#.

You can imagine the F bombs from me. It’s bloody ridiculous that as a busy dealer we are having to jump through these hoops for support.

You can see the issue here. We couldn’t run Roon in the store and as a dealer, we needed a replacement ASAP, not three weeks later.

You won’t see Roon on our website anymore. I will not carry Roon products like the licenses and hardware (Nucleus) until they get their act together for supporting dealers. We are referring people to that Andrew fellow at Small Green Computer for now.


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I have never once had an issue with Roon. It just works every time for me.

A buddy recently had an issue. After the latest update his system stopped working. I told him it sounded like his very old Mac was using a very old OS and had probably finally reached its end of life. I told him to post in their forums. He did this and a short time later a Roon support person replied that he indeed needed to update his Mac OS. When he did this everything worked perfect again. Since I keep my PC up to date I have never encountered an issue such as this.

I have found that Roon monitors their forums and reply quickly to people who post about an issue. This also works well for doing a quick search for support issues if you ever encounter one. I cannot say that the search answers all the questions because I have not personally had any issues.
 
Mike said:
Jack is correct. We use Roon a lot in the store because many of our products require it. We also help customers with Roon Nucleus’ and the like.

Roon is hands down the UI champ. It’s search function and UI are second to none. Very powerful too.

However, for us in the store and me at home (I have Roon running for my NAIM music server which I use in the family room) and it’s buggy in both places, buggy as hell. I’ve been taking videos and will soon start a channel and post them. It’s constantly crashing and it hangs ALL. THE. TIME.

On the flip side, the Lumin app is stable and I’ve been using it so long, and sounds great. It is basic, but fully functional with great support from Peter and the rest of the gang. But certainly it’s not as pretty as Roon. The good news is that Lumin gives you the option of using their software or Roon.

Aurender is the same way: stable, functional and sonically superior to Roon in our A:B tests using the same DAC, cables, etc. Aurender repeatedly says “it’s all about the sound.” That’s always their focus first. Their app is very nice and I use it at home in the big system. Stable and sounds incredible.

You just can’t beat Roon for search and the gorgeous UI. But in my experience and several A/B tests, sonically it gives up a little something to the competitors.


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Click to expand...

Are you saying Roon is buggy as hell and crashes all the time? If so, are you talking about the Roon core or the Roon app on your iPad or phone crashing?
 
Jack said:
But several of them seem to offer better sound quality with less equipment hassle and expense. Many of us live quite happily with the software from Lumin, Aurender, Auralic and Innuous etc and see no need for the extra gear or software.
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It is interesting that among those you have listed above, only Aurender has no association with Roon. Auralic and Lumin have multiple products that are certified as Roon Ready. All of Innuos products are marketed as compatible with Roon Core and Bridge. Much like auto manufacturers who spend thousands of dollars to develop their own proprietary infotainment systems while at the same time offering customers the option to use Apple Carplay or Android Auto instead.
 
mep said:
Are you saying Roon is buggy as hell and crashes all the time? If so, are you talking about the Roon core or the Roon app on your iPad or phone crashing?
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We aren’t 100% sure. I believe it’s the core, because we use 2 iPads and my phone in the store to control Roon and all are doing the same thing. We’ve replaced the core. No change.


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Mike said:
We aren’t 100% sure. I believe it’s the core, because we use 2 iPads and my phone in the store to control Roon and all are doing the same thing. We’ve replaced the core. No change.


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Click to expand...

In my experience, the Roon core running on my Nucleus+ is extremely stable. I have never had to power down my Nucleus+ to solve any problems. What does happen is that the Roon remote app running on my iPad occasionally loses the wireless "handshake" with the Roon Nucleus+ which means it can't find the Roon core. To fix the problem, you just reboot the iPad and restart the Roon app and all is well in the digital world.
 
Mike said:
...Roon is hands down the UI champ. It’s search function and UI are second to none. Very powerful too.

However, for us in the store and me at home (I have Roon running for my NAIM music server which I use in the family room) and it’s buggy in both places, buggy as hell. I’ve been taking videos and will soon start a channel and post them. It’s constantly crashing and it hangs ALL. THE. TIME.

On the flip side, the Lumin app is stable and I’ve been using it so long, and sounds great. It is basic, but fully functional with great support from Peter and the rest of the gang. But certainly it’s not as pretty as Roon. The good news is that Lumin gives you the option of using their software or Roon.

Aurender is the same way: stable, functional and sonically superior to Roon in our A:B tests using the same DAC, cables, etc. Aurender repeatedly says “it’s all about the sound.” That’s always their focus first. Their app is very nice and I use it at home in the big system. Stable and sounds incredible.

You just can’t beat Roon for search and the gorgeous UI. But in my experience and several A/B tests, sonically it gives up a little something to the competitors.
Click to expand...

i can understand your frustration. in many ways there is a parallel here with apple (sorry randy!) deciding to have a closed system: their software running on their hardware. in doing so they are in complete control of the total user experience and do not have to engineer down to the lowest common denominator, an impossible task. alternatively, when a company (microsoft, roon) has an open system allowing their software to run on anyone's hardware then that company effectively cedes control of the total user experience which is now influenced by a whole host of issues out of their control.

for the most part everything works fine. however, there are always edge/extreme use cases, under spec'd hardware, compatibility issues, etc. when on the roon community/support site one can see there are plenty of users seeking help with a variety of problems which roon support tries to help with. anecdotally, i would estimate that 99+ out of 100 of these support requests result from individual users hardware, networking gear / configuration and the like -- in other words, things out of their control but unavoidable in an open system.

given the number of subscribers, it is already an issue for them to troubleshoot and help solve the volume of these external, user-specific issues. this is not a scalable solution and they will certainly have to find an alternative.

so, it is easy to understand why lumin, aurender, etc don't see these problems -- they only have to ensure their playback software works on a handful of boxes. and, support is limited to the comparatively small number of people buying their expensive gear.

interesting decision here: closed system + tighter UX + specific harware --versus-- open system + more potential issues + unlimited hardware choices.

personally, i chose apple long ago for its closed system and the "it just works" UX. conversely, i choose roon for its open system and hardware flexibility ...hmmmm
 
Mike said:
We aren’t 100% sure. I believe it’s the core, because we use 2 iPads and my phone in the store to control Roon and all are doing the same thing. We’ve replaced the core. No change.


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If I recall, you are running Roon Core on a Nucleus machine. You may have already done this, but if you have a PC or Mac machine at home, why not installing and running Roon Core on one of those? If Roon quits crashing/freezing, then you know for sure that the problem is the Nucleus machine that you were using.

I have always been skeptical of software companies that decide to become hardware manufacturers. In truth, Roon outsources the manufacturing of the Nucleus machines and are likely depending on someone else’s QC for those machines.
 
nicoff said:
If I recall, you are running Roon Core on a Nucleus machine. You may have already done this, but if you have a PC or Mac machine at home, why not installing and running Roon Core on one of those? If Roon quits crashing/freezing, then you know for sure that the problem is the Nucleus machine that you were using.

I have always been skeptical of software companies that decide to become hardware manufacturers. In truth, Roon outsources the manufacturing of the Nucleus machines and are likely depending on someone else’s QC for those machines.
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We have a fast MacBook Pro in the store. Tried that a few months ago. Still choking. Actually, was even worse! Maybe I need a SGC i9.


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I have a friend that just got Roon and said it crashed several times right after install. I have mine installed on a ASUS i5 MINI and it has worked flawlessly now for several months. For me it is the most stable software I have used for playing music. I have used JRiver, Kodi, and Plex and all were buggy.

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aKnyght said:
i can understand your frustration. in many ways there is a parallel here with apple (sorry randy!) deciding to have a closed system: their software running on their hardware. in doing so they are in complete control of the total user experience and do not have to engineer down to the lowest common denominator, an impossible task. alternatively, when a company (microsoft, roon) has an open system allowing their software to run on anyone's hardware then that company effectively cedes control of the total user experience which is now influenced by a whole host of issues out of their control.

for the most part everything works fine. however, there are always edge/extreme use cases, under spec'd hardware, compatibility issues, etc. when on the roon community/support site one can see there are plenty of users seeking help with a variety of problems which roon support tries to help with. anecdotally, i would estimate that 99+ out of 100 of these support requests result from individual users hardware, networking gear / configuration and the like -- in other words, things out of their control but unavoidable in an open system.

given the number of subscribers, it is already an issue for them to troubleshoot and help solve the volume of these external, user-specific issues. this is not a scalable solution and they will certainly have to find an alternative.

so, it is easy to understand why lumin, aurender, etc don't see these problems -- they only have to ensure their playback software works on a handful of boxes. and, support is limited to the comparatively small number of people buying their expensive gear.

interesting decision here: closed system + tighter UX + specific harware --versus-- open system + more potential issues + unlimited hardware choices.

personally, i chose apple long ago for its closed system and the "it just works" UX. conversely, i choose roon for its open system and hardware flexibility ...hmmmm
Click to expand...

From the get go Apple offered a package (hardware with integrated software).

That is not the case with Roon which started being a software company only.

Roon got into hardware to attract non-techie folks who were averse to dealing with computer audio and wanted a plug and play device. That is why Nucleus was born. If a person feels comfortable with computers, I still believe that dollar for dollar a PC (from a quality manufacturer) or a Mac is a better option, because you get a more powerful machine to run power hungry FIR filters and/or players like HQPlayer.
 
Don't use Mac. There are several outstanding issues.

For people who are knowledgeable about computers, my standard recommendation is a NUC8i7BEH m.2 SSD 8GB RAM to run ROCK in a fanless chassis and get a LPS from Mike.
 
wklie said:
Don't use Mac. There are several outstanding issues.

For people who are knowledgeable about computers, my standard recommendation is a NUC8i7BEH m.2 SSD 8GB RAM to run ROCK in a fanless chassis and get a LPS from Mike.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Will give that a try.


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Mike said:
We aren’t 100% sure. I believe it’s the core, because we use 2 iPads and my phone in the store to control Roon and all are doing the same thing. We’ve replaced the core. No change.
Click to expand...

If the Core is indeed crashing and replacing the hardware does not solve the problem you're experiencing, then I'll have to suspect the Roon library is corrupted, or one or more particular music file is crashing it. Please rebuild the music library from scratch - or perhaps just add Tidal / Qobuz music first without including your own files.

In case replaced hardware and rebuilt library does not solve the crash problem, or a music file is crashing Roon, I'm afraid you'll need to create a support thread in Roon forum, have Roon staff enable diagnostics for your account, then they can study the crash log.
 
Mike said:
Roon is hands down the UI champ. It’s search function and UI are second to none. Very powerful too.
Click to expand...

I agree with you on the UI. I actually think jriver beats all the other competitors when it comes to search flexibility and functionality. That part of their program was definitely written by a geek (meant in a good way).

I have found Roon's search to be a little limiting.

Stylus's search in Euphony is also very powerful and continues to expand.
 
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